Another Message Board
Post comments on any topic. Civil discussion and no coarse language please. Side discussions and idees fixes to the sandpits, please.
I’ve moved my irregular email news from Mailchimp to Substack. You can read it here. You can also follow me on Twitter @JohnQuiggin
I’m also trying out Substack as a blogging platform. For the moment, I’ll post both at this blog and on Substack.
John Quiggin 
The constant increase of the official cash rate by the Reserve Bank has no support in monetary theory. The theory of macroeconomic management clearly states that impacts from policy instruments must be verified BEFORE any further tightening. Given that it takes an average of thirteen weeks for the full impact of ONE rise in the official cash rate to be revealed, proceeding with rate rises after only four to five weeks apart is irresponsible and reckless. The use of the so-called ”blunt instrument” of monetary policy in such a frenzied manner smacks more of panic than macroeconomic management. Having tied monetary policy action to the value of the cross elasticity of demand for foreign currencies, but in particular the USD, domestic macroeconomic management was opened up to the whims of hedge funds on forex markets.
The Reserve Bank is not alone in all of this mismanagement of macroeconomic variables. The Bank of England is similarly placed and was forced to intervene in the forex markets when hedge funds tried to short sell the British pound. This placed pension funds in the UK at risk of failure.
See
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/09/23/british-pound-plunges-to-fresh-37-year-low-of-1point10-.html
With both the RBA and the Bank of England slavishly following behind the US Fed Reserve moves on official interest rates in the US economy, domestic macroeconomic management is being tied to the inflation rate inside the US economy and not their own domestic interest rate. This loss of sovereignty is a direct result of ineptitude by both central banks.
Yep, that feeling when you realize the “adults” running the country are all idiots.
Gregory, a few comments, if I may.
“The theory of macroeconomic management clearly states that impacts from policy instruments must be verified BEFORE any further tightening.”
This sounds sensible. I should think skilled chefs would agree with this principle in all situations when the consequences of an action – such as adding a dash of this or that to a sauce – are uncertain. The purpose of my home economics example is merely to illustrate that without uncertainty as to the quantitative effect of an action, the principle wouldn’t make sense.
“Given that it takes an average of thirteen weeks for the full impact of ONE rise in the official cash rate to be revealed, proceeding with rate rises after only four to five weeks apart is irresponsible and reckless.”
By then focusing on an empirically observed “average” of the time it takes for monetary policy (cash rate) to show effect, the reason for the said principle (uncertainty as to the effect) is negated by means of substituting another uncertainty, namely the applicability of the “average” lag to the specific circumstances.
While I would agree that the USA’s policies (FEDs in this case) has influence on what happens in a very large segment of the ‘global economy’, I don’t see the transmission mechanism to be solely via the policy settings of the various central banks but rather via the global network of financial markets, such that what happens on financial (bonds and shares) markets primarily but also in physical asset and commodity markets puts pressure on various central banks to adjust policy settings.
Moreover, as the recent events in the UK remind, fiscal policy decisions have repercussions in financial markets, including foreign exchange markets. PM Liz Truss and her Chancellor saw themselves compelled to reverse their decision of income tax cut for high income earners. Lets see whether there is a reflection of this episode in Australia regarding the 2018 ‘legislated’ income tax cut for high income earners in 2024.
So, IMHO, your criticism of the RBA’s interest rate decisions is overstated. To the best of my knowledge, the Bank of England’s situation is different again and therefore your conclusion is overstated but for different reasons. Moreover, the idea of monetary policy sovereignty of individual countries hasn’t even worked very well during the Keynesian era; it should be discarded and replaced with the issue of ‘policy coordination’ in a multi-dimensional conceptual framework.
Kind regards
EG
The Wimberley/Zelensky/Hodges prediction that Ukraine will win the war by Christmas is looking less of an outlier, isn’t it?
ISW make the point that the Russian troops the Ukrainian army is currently defeating are what’s left of its best pre-invasion regular units like the 1st Guards Tank Army. By the end of the month, there won’t be much left of the professional standing army Putin started the war with. His under-equipped and untrained conscript replacements will face the choice between mutiny, surrender and massacre.
Anecdote: Russian soldiers in Kherson don’t have proper battlefield radios and have to rely on discount store walkie-talkies the Ukrainians can spoof with fake orders, or jam. So they can’t communicate with their flanking counterparts. Shades of the Battle of Megiddo in 1918, but without the Australian camel corps.
After Kherson, Zelensky will have to decide whether to go next for the Crimea. Any good reason not to?
That depends – how sure are we that the nuclear threat is bluster? (I have no way of knowing and I try not to think about it.)
It seems to me that – maybe not now, but soon? – we need our best minds such as yourself figuring out a facesaving exit for the Russian leader. It seems to me that losing back that area at some hazy, distant time might be more palatable – especially if it weren’t a declared certainty. Weren’t you talking about some kind of protectorate status a while ago? (I’ll go look.)
I hope this doesn’t get me kicked off for sticking up for the Russian leader?!
I do feel for Russian people though. And after all, they did beat the Nazis for us, to some extent, right? It’s not like the rest of us don’t owe them. From the bleachers, I’ve felt bad about how the post-Wall period went. (Though, I am not sure how much room there really was.) Maybe something better can happen now?
None of this is to deny the righteousness of the rage – I’m just saying that rage doesn’t usually work well long-term. Zelensky has played a brilliant hand, but this may be the trickiest part.
“Moreover, the idea of monetary policy sovereignty of individual countries hasn’t even worked very well during the Keynesian era; it should be discarded and replaced with the issue of ‘policy coordination’ in a multi-dimensional conceptual framework.” – Ernestine Gross.
As a former, temporary, acolyte of MMT, I have to shamefacedly admit this statement makes more sense to me these days. I assume E.G. means international policy coordination. There continues to be the problem that the paramount power can drive bargains mainly in its own interest. But then maybe the EU and Japan (for example) can be a balance for the US in this regard. I leave out here the complication of China.
Personally, I believe the RBA is doing its job – which is rare these days in oz. I’ve said it a hundred times, and I’ll keep saying it: we have a significant problem here in oz and it’s not financial strain, it’s not a lack of jobs, it’s not investment appetite. It’s getting *Australians* to work. Australians to do jobs that are essential to servicing the economy and society. Yes, the jobs that people don’t want to do, but need to do otherwise it all eventually falls over.
Considering the possible outcome, being 99% sure that Russia will not use nukes is rather unsatisfactory. Once Russia does throw a nuke no matter how small, my optimism that will be it is rather far below 99—% and the world end probability starts to get rather high.No clue how to lower the probabilities. The Ukraine has not even touched Russian or white Russian territory with a single rocket so far. That looks sufficiently de-escalating to me.
Troy,
People will do almost any job if it pays well enough and is reasonably safe. Did you ever think people are not doing these jobs because they don’t pay enough or are too dangerous? This choice will be modified by how desperate they are of course.
You could come to me and say, “Ikonoclast, I will pay you $1 an hour to work in shit up to your waist dressed in a loincloth and nothing else.” This is like some untouchables still do in India. I would say “F*** off.”
You could come to me and say, “Ikonoclast, I will pay you $100 an hour to work in shit up to your waist dressed in full, state of the art, hermetic PPE with helmet and cooled, safe air-supply and a perfect, verifiable safety record. I’ll add in job insurance. If you die at work your wife will receive a $200,000 payout.” I would read the fine print, run the contract by my solicitor and if it all checked out I would sign up.
So what you are really saying is you want an underclass of people to be poor enough and desperate enough to do shit jobs for shit pay to improve your life amenity. And then you don’t understand why people won’t buy into this bad deal if they have any alternatives at all.
As close to the facts as we can get. Bravo Karen Cutter, Actuary,
Troy, I respect your opinion on the RBA, but their job description does not match what they are doing so far in 2022. That job description reads:
“It is the duty of the Reserve Bank Board, within the limits of its powers, to ensure that the monetary and banking policy of the Bank is directed to the greatest advantage of the people of Australia and that the powers of the Bank under this Act and any other Act, other than the Payment Systems (Regulation) Act 1998, the Payment Systems and Netting Act 1998 and Part 7.3 of the Corporations Act 2001, are exercised in such a manner as, in the opinion of the Reserve Bank Board, will best contribute to:
(a) the stability of the currency of Australia;
(b) the maintenance of full employment in Australia; and
(c) the economic prosperity and welfare of the people of Australia. “”
– Reserve Bank Act 1959 No. 4, 1959
Compilation No. 30
Compilation date: 1 October 2020
Includes amendments up to: Act No. 64, 2020
Registered: 21 October 2020
Part II—Constitution, policy and management of the Reserve Bank
Division 2—Policy and management of the Reserve Bank
10 Functions of Reserve Bank Board.
Now it seems to me that the RBA is fulfilling only (a) of the above three criteria. They are failing to fulfil (c) and there last six rate rises are likely to make (b) impossible in 2023.
That is why I don’t think the RBA is doing its job in terms of macroeconomic management. By not waiting to see what the full effects of successive rate hikes are, they risk plunging the domestic economy into a downturn that could leave it open for a recession. Having lived through the last recession inflicted on Australia by the RBA in 1990,
“In 1990, Treasurer Paul Keating admitted that Australia was in recession. “The first thing to say is, the accounts do show that Australia is in a recession. The most important thing about that is that this is a recession that Australia had to have,” he said in November 1990. The remark that this was the ‘recession we had to have’ became as famous as Keating’s previous prediction that Australia would become a “banana republic”.”
which was then followed by the global recession of July 1991 to April 1992.
Unemployment in Australia peaked at 10.9%!
”The unemployment rate recovered to 6.2% in 1989. It then increased again, reaching a peak of 10.9% in 1993 following the severe economic downturn of 1990-91. The unemployment rate has been generally falling since then.”
1301.0 – Year Book Australia, 2001 – Australian Bureau of Statistics
http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/Previousproducts/1301.0Feature%20Article142001
In 1990 the RBA finalised their rate rises. These impacted the Australian economy for the next five years.
“The official Reserve Bank cash rate peaked at a punishing 17.5 per cent in January 1990. Putting that in perspective, the bank’s official cash rate is now at a record low of two per cent, with the typical home loan rate now around five per cent.”
The year of record interest rates – 1990 – 9News
http://www.9news.com.au/national/the-year-of-record-interest-rates-1990/f1ad24e5-ba1d-47d8-94dc-5fd5099dbe72
Having worked all through the 1990s watching people lose their jobs and struggling to get another one that had similar pay and conditions, I saw the
“(b) the maintenance of full employment in Australia; and
(c) the economic prosperity and welfare of the people of Australia. “”
plummet while the RBA did nothing to rectify the damage done by their rate increases. Net wealth fell dramatically as small businesses failed and homes were repossessed.
We should all hope that this does not happen again in this decade.
On Putin’s exit (Pexit?)
The brutal Ugandan dictator Idi Amin lived 23 years in exile in Saudi Arabia following his deposition. The difficulty with this solution is not practical but moral. How can you try underlings for war crimes while letting their architect live on in a gilded cage without accountability? IMHO – though I understand why others may disagree – you have to give priority to saving the living over justice for the dead, especially given the very serious nuclear risk. If an exile deal is what it takes to secure a quick and peaceful exit for Putin, I’d say take it.
It may not be on the table. Putin may cling on to power in defeat. He may be assassinated in a Russian coup, or commit suicide, or be jailed in Russia by his successor. I don’t see how anyone can predict how this will work out.
PS: I’ve just thought of another possibility. Putin may simply disappear. He is a KGB-trained career spook with access to vast resources to concoct a new identity or two.
I agree with you – and besides, supposing there were any kind of a choice, I prefer legal procedures for the punishment of war crimes (and any crimes) – so the goal is to end the thing as soon and cleanly as possible, and then throw lawyers at whatever issues are left. (I think lawyers do better at this than people think. It is just less satisfying and takes longer.) And I agree with Hix, I hope it doesn’t sound like I am critiquing Ukraine – not at all.
I don’t follow closely at all but it seems to me unlikely he would ever leave Russia? He seems like he couldn’t exist anywhere else, somehow. I guess that will be a decision for Russians.
Do we think there is any chance that this could be our last aggressive war? Is there something about watching it this way, with all our new tech, that might actually teach us all something? (I am not usually an optimist.)
With notably rare exceptions, Peter Thiel is a beneficial and benign force. (hat tip to fn^CT)
*
” ‘Don’ of a new era: the rise of Peter Thiel as a US rightwing power player
“The Paypal Mafia’s lynchpin is putting his vast tech fortune to work for candidates aligned to Trump’s agenda in the midterms”
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/may/30/peter-thiel-republican-midterms-trump-paypal-mafia
*
“The seer and the seen: Surveying Palantir’s surveillance platform
Andrew Iliadis & Amelia Acker
…
“Palantir wants its surveillance platform to become the de facto operating system for governments and the world’s most sensitive data across private industries and domains while also ingesting open data from public institutions. While Palantir may claim otherwise, we believe there is enough evidence in these patents to suggest that Palantir has an internal knowledge base or knowledge graph for labeling entities in the world, along with their attributes and relationships, and that these occluded resources are not fully released to users, but that users are subject to them in using the products. Thus, the relevance of Palantir to emerging media and communication is found in the company’s technology which acts as a mediator between the social worlds of data and information.”
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01972243.2022.2100851
*
fn^CT https://crookedtimber.org/2011/03/30/with-notably-rare-exceptions/
PPPPPPP
Public Private Partnerships Plantir Patents Proscribe Public Privacy
” The UK – along with the rest of the west – has spent 40 years waving through anticompetitive mergers, under a doctrine that holds that monopolies are “efficient” (Thiel agrees: according to him, “competition is for losers”).
The combination of lax merger scrutiny and PPP inevitably leads to this kind of play: one deep-pocketed company can “hoover up” all the contractors to the NHS and form a single entity that can hold the NHS to ransom.”
From:
“How Palantir will steal the NHS
…
“But there’s a more sinister aspect to PPPs that is only just coming to light, exemplified by Palantir’s leaked plans to take over the NHS.
“Palantir is one of the most sinister companies on the global stage, a company whose pitch is to sell humans rights abuses as a service. The customers for this turnkey service include America’s most corrupt police departments, who use Palantir’s products to monitor protest movements.”
https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/01/the-palantir-will-see-you-now/#public-private-partnership
News of Elon Musk further proceeding with his purchase of Twitter raises some interesting points incl, will he let Trump back on?
This could be bad for Trump as his struggling alt media company doesn’t need the competition of Trump on Twitter.
It could also be bad for Trump in that a wider exposure of his unhinged rants could swing voters over to the democrats.
Can our resident mathematicians confirm or disconfirm this statement?
“You cannot stack gamma functions to beat exponents.”
I assume this means that if you sum a gamma function (or endless string of gamma functions?) [1] with an exponential function you cannot bend the graph of the exponential off some kind of exponentially rising course, let alone to the linear or horizontal?
Note 1. I very much doubt I can handle gamma functions mathematically (yet or ever unless I make more effort).
Ikon, I suggest asking Stacheexhange. Aren’t gamma functions are up in calculus land and geometry and algebra first?
“Questions tagged [gamma-function]
Ask Question
“Questions on the gamma function
n!n! for arbitrary argument, and related functions. The Gamma function is a specific way to extend the factorial function to other values using integrals.
2,813 questions
https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/gamma-function
KT2,
Yeah I am reviewing geometry and algebra first in my little math project. But I have about 6 little projects and 6 big projects going at the moment, indoors and outdoors, so my energy is spread thin. I actually find at age 68 and retired, energy is what gets spread thin. I have the time, but not the energy. Otherwise, I could do 6 hours of physical work and 6 hours of brain work in a day (say).
As well as worrying about my intelligence (“whose” decline I am trying arrest), I am worried about the human race’s intelligence. I firmly believe of the opinion it’s declining as per this:
https://juliancribb.blog/2021/10/07/idiocracy-is-the-decline-in-human-intelligence-undermining-democracy/
But I would also say people are being dumbed down by miseducation, misinformation, disinformation and the general moronising propaganda of neoliberalism.
We are in massive trouble.
Okay people, signing off. I’ve said enough on the J.Q. blog over the years. Time for me to call it a day. I’ve been given a good run. No complaints. I’m okay, by the way. Good in fact, for a 68 year old curmudgeon. 🙂 Stay safe. Cherrio!
Gregory,
You listed the RBA’s policy objectives and you noted they achieving only 1. This reminded my of Prof Jan Tinbergen’s work on ‘targets and instruments’ from mid-last century. In Tinbergen’s framework, the policy objectives are called targets and the variables, the value of which are under the control of the authority, are called instruments. Prof Tinbergen applied what one could call these days a spanning condition for policy implementation. That is, an authority must have as many (independent) instruments as targets. The RBA has only one policy instrument, the cash rate (‘interest rate’ in many macro models).
Jan Tinbergen also wrote on income distribution and came up with the 1:5 rule. If the income distribution exceeds this rule then he expects socio-economic problems. I am not aware of the RBA having any policy instrument to affect the income distribution and therefore the welfare of all Australians.
The following link, provided by the corporate finance institute, contains a reasonably good summary
https://corporatefinanceinstitute.com/resources/knowledge/economics/jan-tinbergen/
Timothy Snyder on how the war ends: https://snyder.substack.com/p/how-does-the-russo-ukrainian-war
Recommended. He is right to see the dénouement as essentially an issue of Russian internal politics, as Putin’s monocracy unravels with the ñilitary defeat. Two of the leading siloviki, Kadyrov (Chechnya) and Prigozhin (Wagner mercenaries) are already taking aim at Shoigu (Minister of Defence).
One player Snyder omits is Shoigu’s relacement conscript army, already 200,000 strong by his account and heading to 300,000. Most western discussion measures this underequipped, undertrained and incmpetently led horde against the New Model Ukrainian army, against which is it is obviously doomed. But as an actor within Russia, it has much more potential. If it mutinies, who can disarm it? What’s left of the regular army are stuck in Ukraine. Local cops, FSB, Rosguardia? Unlikely. The Chechens and Wagner mercs are much more effective individually, but there are not that many of them in a vast country. The conscripts already have guns, and a 1914 bolt-action rifle can still kill. As any Roman emperor could have told Putin, it is a bad idea to leave large groups of armed men unpaid and unfed. At the moment they are disgruntled rather than mutinous, but it only takes one spark for that to change.
Iko: Sorry to read your envoi. I’ve enjoyed reading you. Have you considered just cutting back?
Goodbye and happy Math Iko.
Ernestine,
Thank you for that reference on Professor Tinbergen’s thesis. I am rewriting my 2020
book TOO MUCH MONEY. It is amazing how quickly populous economic books get out of date. When I published that book in 2020, MMT was the rage and official interest rates hovered around zero. As I lived and taught economics in both the 1980s and 1990s, none of what was happening in 2020 matched my theoretical knowledge base of over twenty major economic theory books. As you saw in my earlier blog, I had to teach in an economic environment of official interest rates in the double digits and one of the longest recessions in Australia’s economic history. Of course, back in 1990 there was stagflation. But apart from that major difference, other variables were similar to those developing now in 2022. The recent OPEC move is just one example. So, my new book will be entitled RATES TOO HIGH. I may not get to publish it until 2024 but my first draft is half finished. In this book, I am as critical of central bankers for being too active on official money markets as I was critical of them for being too inactive over asset bubbles before 2020. That reference you gave me will help refine my attack on central banks’ excessive rate rises. That part about income distribution was very fascinating. I am a fan of the work done in this area by Thomas Piketty.
Thomas Piketty – Home – ENS
piketty.pse.ens.fr/en
Thomas Piketty – Publications Teaching Professor at EHESS and at the Paris School of Economics Co-director, World …
Thanks again for both of your contributions. They help me refine my criticisms and give me new insights into a murky (new economic term there- I define it as lacking transparency) current global economic crisis.
Microbiologist & Director & CEO of the Burnet Institute, Professor Brendan Crabb AC tweeted on Oct 5:
Dr Norman Swan was on ABC News Breakfast on May 10, where he said:
“When we were talking last week the running average, daily average was 37, and I think it’s still about 37, um, so a lot of people are dying, more than 5,000 this year – could end up being 13,000 in a year – a bad flu season is fifteen hundred. So, this is the worst year of the pandemic and nobody’s talking about it.”
“We are benefitting from a high vaccination rate and that’s, that’s why we’re getting low numbers of, a low rate of deaths, but the absolute numbers are high – I mean, these are jet crashes every week, so when you’ve got large numbers of infections, you do get them flowing through to deaths.”
“Well, it’s kind of a false question to ask because, if these were children, there’d be riots in the street. If they were sudden events, we’d, we’d be very concerned. We can, we can get very upset about one or two deaths in a particularly tragic circumstance, but we are… human beings are very good at just getting used to, um, quite large numbers, and just going numb to it. That’s, that’s a self-protection mechanism that’s very ancient in us.”
Deaths from COVID-19 in Australia so far:
Period _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _Days_ Accumulated Total _ Total for Period _ Average deaths/day
2020, Mar 01 to Dec 31: 306 _ _ _ 909 _ _ _ _ _ _ 909 _ _ _ _ _ _ 2.97
2021, Jan 01 to Dec 31: 365 _ _ 2,239_ _ _ _ _ _1,330 _ _ _ _ _ _ 3.64
2022, Jan 01 to Oct 07: 280 _ 15,248 _ _ _ _ _ 13,009 _ _ _ _ _ 46.46
(ref: covidlive)
Australia is tracking towards 16,900+ deaths due to COVID for the full year, 2022.
Deaths from COVID in Australia so far this year is similar to a fully loaded A380 crashing approximately every 2½ weeks (max. 853 passengers), or a full 787-9 crashing approximately every week (max. 296 passengers).
The ABS reported on Sep 30:
https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/health/causes-death/provisional-mortality-statistics/latest-release
It seems to me that Dr Norman Swan’s assessment in May has been proved to be an underestimate. And yet ‘shock-jock’ Ben Fordham alleged on-air during his show on Radio 2GB on May 11 that: “There is no bigger fearmonger than Dr Norman Swan.” It seems to meet Fordham needs to eat humble pie.
Ikonoclast, I read the article by Julian Cribb, which you have linked. IMHO, this article is a promotional piece, aimed at selling a book by means of creating fear or alarm to get attention in this world of attention seeking information providers.
The central thesis of this blurb is that there has been a decline in ‘human intelligence’ as measured by IQ tests, as a consequence of chemical pollution and this constitutes a risk to democracy.
The role of environmental degradation, including chemical pollution which enters the food chain or is inhaled or absorbed in some other way, is not new to you (or me and most people in one way or another). But, what is also not new is there are poisonous plants and there are creatures that have poisons as their weapons, which also work on humans. Humans had to learn to identify these ‘natural’ poisons and to protect themselves against exposure to these. Surely, there is plenty of evidence by now of societies, by way of regulation, to take measures to reduce exposure to human made poisons.
You and I and a lot of other people if not all, know about the serious limitations of IQ tests to measure ‘intelligence’. The Aborigines of Australia surely are a prime example of successfully surviving in an environment without human made chemical poisons. I venture to say, Aborigines who are not educated in the European system would score very low on IQ tests designed for European-type cultures. I don’t know whether the book discusses this issue and I am most unlikely to find out because I don’t read books that are promoted in this manner (it is one way of making a selection; I don’t claim it is the best or even a good way; it is merely my way.)
Why should democracy depend on IQ test results? My IQ doesn’t seem to be high enough to even formulate a hypothesis in support of such a suggestion.
I tend to agree with your statement of propaganda and dogma such as a blind belief system, which become labelled “neoliberalism” is a danger to democracy. This is not the only dogma, which has dominated societies for some time in the past and it may not be the last one. You probably know more about the history in this regard.
Ikon, you say good bye from this blog.
You have broached very important topics and you had the courage to talk about population growth as a factor in environmental degradation. You had the courage to advocate a simpler life. On this topic you are with a sizeable portion of the young people. The current war of aggression by Russia in Ukraine seems to have quite an impact on the perception of many Europeans as to what is ‘wealth’. That is, the financial accounting (including GDP) notion of wealth is being challenged and the importance of the so-called ‘real economy’ is becoming more apparent.
How about you just take a sabbatical for a limited time to devote some of your time to pure thought – mathematics – and nature. I don’t think I am the only one who will miss your posts.
Take care
EG
James, thanks for the link. I enjoyed reading it – and I sure hope he’s right.
“Ike,” don’t leave us! ; ) There aren’t many interesting things to read on the internet, imo.
John Hewson recently wrote of the incompetence of Mathias Cormann in his role in the OECD. Frustrations have caused economists to write an open letter to him, expressing their frustration at his non performance.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-ER9RUtg62bx_hFNC05tRkHYrXWkTgpkFPMljILafZQ/edit?usp=sharing
Ikonoclast, I’ll miss you.
And I’m with Ernestine. Take a sabbarical. Drop in occasionally.
Thanks for the positive and negative and between. I’ll still have a monist / dualist problem even without promoting from you.
https://academic.oup.com/monist
The optimist says:
“The glass is half full.”
The pessimist says:
“The glass is half empty.”
The engineer says:
“The glass is twice as big as it needs to be.”
I hope your glass in absentia is just right for you Ikonoclast. 🍺 Cheers
And puzzles for your math muscle.
Cut the knot org
Interactive Mathematics Miscellany
and Puzzles
“Back in 1996, Alexander Bogomolny started making the internet math-friendly by creating thousands of images, pages, and programs for this website, right up to his last update on July 6, 2018. Hours later on July 7th he passed away. His friend Nassim Taleb announced the devastating news. “He was of the few saints you meet in life: he gave more, much more than he took.” Alex’s family and friends have asked the Wolfram Foundation to serve as a steward for continuing maintenance and updates to the site, more details to come.
http://www.cut-the-knot.org/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Bogomolny
Ahhh.. Land-escape!
Written on 1 March 2019 – “dangerous for volatility to be an asset class and, simultaneously, a measure of risk for most of the asset management industry.”
And now?
*
“Behind the illusion of stability
…
“6 Risk premia investing and volatility
“When expected nominal returns are low, small but persistent risk premia become very attractive. Consider investors seeking to harvest the volatility risk premium. My view? It is dangerous for volatility to be an asset class and, simultaneously, a measure of risk for most of the asset management industry.”
…
https://www.ruffer.co.uk/en/thinking/articles/the-ruffer-review/2019-01-behind-the-illusion-of-stability